


Not a Perfect Person

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [39]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Apologies, Gen, John Watson is a bit of an arse, Sherlock Holmes is put upon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-03
Updated: 2013-04-03
Packaged: 2017-12-07 08:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/746319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone always assumes that Sherlock Holmes is hell to live with and that John Watson has the patience of a saint. However, there's a reason John asked Mike Stamford that day: "Who would want to share a flat with me?"</p><p>Or: in which it's all John's fault, and Sherlock is, for Sherlock, remarkably patient.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not a Perfect Person

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the first line of Hooberstank's The Reason.

“I don’t know how you put up with him.”

John blinked up at the speaker, only half aware of what had been said, concentrating as he was (through the remnants of a killer headache) on the details of the body. The small, neat hole in the forehead that looked almost like it had been made with a drill bit, the pool of congealed blood that indicated a larger exit wound under the body, the handful of willow leaves clutched in the left hand, the absolute absence of a willow tree or any approximation thereof in the house, the yard, the street or, as far as he knew, the entire suburb.

“Sorry, what?”

“Him.” The new forensic examiner nodded at Sherlock, crawling all over the room – over tables, along the back of the sofa and half way up a bookshelf to stare at the corner of the ceiling. “Rude bastard.”

John replayed the last few minutes of conversation, to which he’d only half been paying attention. Sherlock had called into doubt the intelligence and diligence of the Met, the victim, the victim’s neighbours and the forensic examiner, a litany which was really only so much white noise these days. Just Sherlock warming up. Ah yes. And he’d called John an idiot for suggesting the willow leaves had come from a wood nymph, because that was _the only logical explanation_.

John had been a bit ticked off with Sherlock about this morning’s incident with the toaster that didn’t toast and the loaf of fresh bread that had in any case  become a nest for weevils and _goddamnit how do you manage to curdle milk with nothing more than a look, you arse?_  So yes, sarcastic wood nymph comments had been met with irritation because this wasn’t _breakfast,_ this was a _case_.

And to be fair, there had also been last night’s incident, with John coming home drunk and accidentally destroying the almost-complete experiment involving the last set of weevils and then laughing himself stupid when Sherlock set his favourite bathrobe on fire trying unsuccessfully to save the experiment on the stove with the slow-cooked radio alarm clock.

So yeah, it had been a fractious 24 hours at Baker Street, and being called an idiot by a rightly annoyed Sherlock was just par for the course. John was right now engaged in trying to come up with a less flippant observation, should he be called upon to give one. If Sherlock chose to speak to him again in the next 36 hours. Which, apart from calling him an idiot, he hadn’t done since this morning.

“Must be a right pain in the arse to live with,” continued the examiner.

John considered Sherlock’s non-response to last night’s drunken stupidity, and to John’s particularly foul temper this morning; not the result of a nightmare but of a hangover and dark, painful, unwanted emotions.  The hangover had been earned in the process of avoiding those feelings and the nightmares, even though John _knew_ it was a _stupid_ process. He seemed to try it every couple of years anyway, on getting bad news. Because, John thought in bitter self-recrimination, that approach had worked so well for his father and for Harry, and obviously for him too, every other time he’d tried it. Bad news; drink self to oblivion; avoid unpleasant emotion; be a total fucking arse to everyone that mattered; have more unpleasant emotions added to the ones you’re trying to avoid. Oh yeah. Fucking _brilliant_ process, that.

John further considered Sherlock’s non-response to John using up all the hot water in a selfishly long shower because John had needed the space and the quiet, not really for the hangover, but for the tumult of emotion he’d been trying to avoid.

Yesterday he’d had news of an old friend’s death on patrol outside Kandahar. Fucking IEDs. It never helped, that he knew what they did to the human body. That he could picture what had happened to Captain Carl Frasier. The hot water couldn’t wash away the images in his mind’s eye, any more than the copious amounts of beer and whisky the previous night had done. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, because he could see it and taste the blood and dust and it was a classic nightmare trigger, and he’d thought… well, to be honest, he hadn’t thought, not properly. It would have been better to feel it, and let the nightmares come, even though they made him feel like his legs had been cut out from under him and his spine stripped to bone and nerve and made his heart race fit to burst and his shoulder spasm and ache and made him wake shaking and crying and…

… and Sherlock would have been there, and brought him back to Baker Street, away from the desert, away from loss, with a touch and a quiet word. Without pity or comment or judgement.  With understanding and acceptance. With music or with silence, whichever he needed most; and Sherlock somehow always knew which would work, to help restore John to the present, to himself.

John wished now he’d come home and let Sherlock read the darkness in his head; he wished he’d let himself feel it. He wished he’d taken up the guitar and Sherlock his violin and soothed or shredded the ghosts away. Instead, he’d tried to hide from the feelings and the memory, and this was the result.

Sherlock was absolutely right. John was an idiot. He’d apologise. He’d... get Sherlock a new dressing gown, for a start. Some more weevils. Fuck it, a bunch of flowers, why not? He could order it at the same time he ordered a wreath for Carl Frasier’s funeral. A huge fucking bunch of flowers, as big as a Volkswagen. If nothing else it might make Sherlock laugh at him.

John caught Sherlock’s eye. Sherlock frowned at him. John grimaced in one of his nuanced face-pulls that translated as: “Sorry I’m such an arse”. Sherlock narrowed his eyes back in an easily read: “Forgiven. Get on with the work.”

“Anything more constructive to offer, now John, than woodland mythology?”

An image flashed into John’s mind, of Carl’s funeral. Of funerals before it. “Unless it’s some kind of military memorial wreath... not really.”

Sherlock’s eyes widened. “Now, there’s an idea...”

“What is?”

“A wreath.”

John frowned. “You want me to go looking for florists then?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. If it’s a sign, it’s personal. No. Didn’t Dimmock say that the victim’s father was a Napoleonic hobbyist?”

“Yeah. Something about him being at a re-enactment this weekend, so they were having trouble getting hold of him.”

Sherlock nodded and got back to his examination of the rubbish bin. John watched him, wondering how the impossible, magnificent bastard could look so graceful while burrowing through vegetable scraps, empty tins and mouldy noodles.

A crow of triumph signalled the discovery of a clue, and Sherlock re-emerged from the rubbish bin with what looked like a bent piece of tin, which he waved under the nearest policeman’s nose.

“Look in the space under the stairs, or the attic, but probably the stairs, for a red coat, probably like a Regency period uniform jacket, and signs of an antique firearm. Musket, I’d say. Musket balls in the pockets of the uniform or along the skirting board. Oh, and look for the cat.”

“What the...”

“A long-haired cat, but a peculiar looking thing. Persian perhaps, but short-legged.” Sherlock stabbed at his phone for a few moments and then grinned his pleasure at the result. “ _The dachshund of the cat world_ , it says here. The Napoleon Cat. I expect it’s hiding, though it’s possible it was shot as well.”

“A cat was shot?”

“It was hardly the shooter, was it? How could you miss it? The cat hair? The scratches on the furniture, but only around the base? The musket-shot  holes in the ceiling? The _date_.  It’s the _18 th of June_. The victim’s father was obsessed with Napoleon and the victim hated his father. Idiots, the lot of you. It’s so _simple.”_

Sherlock whirled away, talking fifteen to the dozen about family heirlooms and unreliable antique guns and disputes over cat hair and the deliberate needling of purists with inappropriately named cat breeds. In the process, he had another dig at the police, the victim, the victim’s father, the entire branch of history hobbyists obsessed with the Napoleonic period, the examiner’s lack of attention to detail and also the breeders of short-legged, long-haired cats.

“Seriously, you probably deserve a medal,” the examiner concluded while watching this performance, “I honestly don’t know how you do it.”

John scowled then sighed. “It’s not so hard. I downloaded a couple of sainthoods online. Ten pounds apiece. We have one each for emergencies.”

The examiner looked puzzled and slightly annoyed.

“Haven’t you got a period uniform and a Napoleonic cat to look for?” John asked him pointedly.

Sherlock suddenly loomed at his elbow. “Why are we still here, John?”

“I haven’t the foggiest,” said John, putting his notebook away, “Sorry I was a such a git.”

Sherlock waved his hands dismissively. “Must be about your turn.”

John laughed. “I forgot to check the roster.” He sobered again. “Sherlock, I...”

“It’s fine, John.”

“No, I...”

“John. You got bad news. You got drunk. You were an arse. You’re sorry. Apology accepted. I’m bored now. Change the subject.”

“You don’t make anything easy, do you?”

“I thought I made it extraordinarily easy. Or are you still being an arse?”

“I should have bought more than two sainthoods.”

“What?”

“Never mind. How about we go to the range? I’ll teach you how to strip and reassemble an assault rifle blindfolded.”

Sherlock looked interested. Then he looked at the forensic examiner.

“Yes,” he said.

“I didn’t ask...” spluttered the examiner.

“You didn’t have to. And yes, I am a genius, yes, he is a bit mad, and yes, you are an idiot. Goodbye.”

John pulled a kind of ‘Well, there you go then’ face and, grinning, followed Sherlock out of the house.

Later, John nearly had a heart attack at the cost of a replacement robe for Sherlock, but he bought it anyway, in the right colour blue and everything.

He put a pair of purple faux-fur slippers with them, though, because sometimes being an arse to your flatmate was fun. The look of horror on Sherlock’s face was absolutely worth it. The fate of the slippers – for an experiment involving maggots and food dye – was also worth the price of purchase.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> And if you want to see what a Napoleon Cat looks like, visit <http://www.thenapoleoncat.com/>


End file.
